


The Minefield

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Backstory, M/M, Mass Effect 1, Military Science Fiction, POV Male Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard's thoughts on Ashley and Kaidan during the missions leading up to Virmire, and a few truths that snuck up on him later, after Ash's death.<br/>(close canon, originally written as backstory for a different fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Minefield

It’s funny how a thing like this can get under your skin.  
Not much gets under mine, and I like it that way. Makes it easier when people I don’t know want to talk to me about Akuze because they read about it on a wall someplace. That’s my past. I’ve made peace with it. Civilians don’t know any better, so they ask.  
This… well, it started slow enough.  
“If you expect to get me in a tinfoil miniskirt and thigh-high boots, I want dinner first,” Ashley bristled, “...Sir.” So, I thought, she’s easy to wind up. This should be fun.  
“That’ll be enough, chief,” Kaidan cut her off.  
Words, to go with an amazing view.

Ash was rough around the edges, trying a kind of double-reverse to look softer than she really was. Overcompensating, to hide a sensitive core that just wasn’t there. Who taught her it should be, and why, I’ll never know. Ashley was a damned good marine. I found myself wishing she’d just stick to that.

Kaidan wasn’t the only Biotic I’d worked with during my time with the Alliance, but he was the first one to call me out on being an L3-user myself. Casually. Like I shouldn’t even have been surprised.  
I _was_ surprised, and not very happy about it. What else had come to light about me after Akuze? Had the brass been sharing that information, too?

Ash was a racist. She had her reasons- -granddaughter of the same General Williams who had surrendered to the Turians at Shanxi for godssake- -but she was one. Great thing to be in a crew that included members from all the council races and then some, really. After Liara’s mother died though, something got through. The Williams women are strong. Maybe she saw the same thing in T’soni. She reminded me to go check on her.

I took a chance on the Major Kyle mission, taking all Biotics with me. Wrex, I left behind. He was good, but there’s something about big, intimidating nonhumans that we all react to, deep down, whether we want to admit it or not. If there was to be a snap decision made by one of the Major’s followers, I didn’t want it based on that.  
I brought Kaidan, because I knew where he stood by then, and Liara, because she was at least pretty, and came off as nonthreatening. As we walked in, I could sense them, sensing us. They knew. And we knew. And nobody said anything. I saw one of them recognize Kaidan, and look quickly away. Liara alone felt out of place. She was probably the most comfortable one.  
In the end I spoke to Major Kyle as a soldier, and I don’t know if it was that, or the eyes looking silently past my left shoulder, but he woke up, and realized just how deep the shit he’d gotten his people into was. Then he got scared, but Kyle wasn’t a Major for nothing. Kaidan didn’t say a word to me the whole ride home, but I could tell he was thinking hard, and we spoke afterwards.

Virmire was one of those missions. The kind new guys play over and over in their heads later, trying to figure out what they did wrong. I didn’t. But there was a hole, the kind only a pair of ownerless dogtags can leave. I’ve looked into too many of them.  
Kaidan volunteered. Ash shut him down as usual, and they were off again. I told them to can it, and tried to think. Two high-risk positions, one Soldier, one Biotic Sentinel. Whoever I sent with the Commandos would probably take the most fire, but whoever I kept for the bomb might have to repel an even stronger attack when Saren’s people figured out what was going on. Part of me was just glad I HAD good people like that to choose FROM.  
They were protecting each other, I realized.

At that point I just made the decision, and gave each the job that played best to their strengths.  
I sent Ash with the Commandos, and kept Kaidan with me to help wire and protect the bomb.  
The mission went down like quicksand. I lost Saren, but the bomb went off, wiping his base clean. We never even got Ash’s tags back. Kaidan was pretty shook up, and he needed to talk. I let him. It was, as I’d thought, the first time he’d lost someone he’d served with that he hadn’t just met. I listened with half an ear, watching Kaidan stumble through that same minefield I'd been through myself a few years back, only… he found a different way through.

Getting hit on by Liara afterwards, that surprised me. I knew her mind already, and with what she had told me about her people, I’d wondered just how close the mind-joining thing was making us, but still… I could tell the young archaeologist wasn’t just looking for a quick fuck, and I couldn’t handle any more right then, so I let her down easy.  
If it had been Ash, I probably would have said yes. It would still have been a terrible idea, but as soldiers I think we could have forgiven each other for needing somebody to shove up against a bulkhead while the pain was still fresh.

I took Kaidan with me more often after that. Part of it was the empty slot on the roster, and partly… it felt like if I’d paid for his life with hers, then maybe I should be getting some better use out of him. I didn’t dig there too deeply.  
I’d worked with Biotic Sentinels before, but this was the first time I’d regularly had the luxury of one on my own squad, and Kaidan picked up the timing of how I fought fast. I didn’t have to think about him at all, but damned if he wasn’t fun to watch.  
I would get back from away missions hungry, literally. Watching somebody break out an energy bar in the elevator will do that. I got why he did it... I knew all too well that the use of biotics will leave you wrung out like a triathlon swimmer if you can’t eat soon afterwards, but the act of wiping out a room full of enemies and then casually eating a snack, that just looked cool.  
I wanted one.

The Saren mission got steadily uglier. Some of it I saw coming, some of it I didn’t. Saren had a way of working himself into every crevice, completing the patterns wherever he saw weakness in others, and making it work to Sovereign's advantage. Having met them, I could tell the difference between the two and I had to admit, Sovereign had chosen the perfect ally. The more afraid Saren became, the more willing he was to seed that fear wherever he went.  
Kaidan had a lot to say about aliens, and about fear.  
I told him I’d noticed that, regardless of morality, any decision I made out of fear tended to bite me in the ass.  
“...Then it’s a good thing you don’t make many of them,” he replied, with that smile that only showed at the corners of his mouth.  
I smiled back.

After the council hung us out to dry, I walked back to the _Normandy_ in a haze. I didn’t know what I was about to do, but I felt like a sparking cable over liquid oxygen. Garrus seemed to understand the feeling all too well, and we didn’t talk about it. All the power of a badge, or of a Spectre, and we were still sitting this one out on the beach. LOCKED out of our own ship’s drive, just to make sure we played nice.

Kaidan found me down by the weapons lockers. What I’d been planning to get out of mine, and what I would have done with it doesn’t matter now. I sat slumped with my back to the cold metal, and looked up at him. Kaidan started talking, and I shut him down. Or I tried to, but he just kept drawing it out of me like a poison, until I was listening to him again.  
Kaidan wasn’t just here to bitch, I realized. He was sounding me out on something.  
 _“-We’re not going to take this, are we?”_  
In other words, fuck the council. And fuck the ambassador too for hanging us out to dry to score points with them, instead of seeing the big picture.  
The big picture...  
Meat, and wires, and screaming.  
Red dawn over Ilos, and the flame spreads.  
I couldn’t get them out of my head, but the images weren’t just fear. They were a warning I had been about to set aside in pursuit of revenge for what had been done ‘to us’. Petty bullshit, just like the council. What we needed was a way out, and I would find us one.  I needed time, and I needed my head clear. I told him so. It occurred to me that I was on eye level with the front of Kaidan’s pants, and I liked what I saw there.

Sometimes the best way through a minefield is to just start running.

Kaidan caught my glance and swallowed slightly, like his mouth had just gone dry. He tried to hedge his bets with some unconvincing line about me being able to rely on the crew in general, but I had him, and Kaidan knew it. He offered me a hand up off the floor. I took it. A spark of dry static, skin to skin, and then I’d pulled him against me, hard. Eye level now, and the delicious honesty of friction as we leaned closer-

“Sorry to interrupt commander. Got a message from Captain Anderson…” Joker broke in.

_Damn._


End file.
